Isn’t the Internet a wonderful thing! Something happens almost two years ago, and there it sits like a time capsule for all to see.

I met Lazarus Barnhill during a writing contest on Gather.com in October 2007. Entrants posted the first chapter of their work for people to comment on and vote for, and the fifteen top-ranked chapters plus ten chosen by Gather management went on to post the second chapter for more voting. I read some of the chapters, including Laz’s The Medicine People, but I never knew quite what to say about them. Lazarus, on the other hand, wrote marvelous critiques of everyone’s chapters. And he responded to everyone who commented on his. (I didn’t realize this until tonight when I went searching for the comment I left him. Where did he get the time?)

My comment: I may have the (unofficial) lead now, but I have a hunch that things are going to be heating up. Great entry! Good luck. (I still don’tunderstand by what fluke I ended up in first place for a couple of weeks, but there it is.)

Laz’s response: Pat, I’m looking forward to reading More Deaths Than One. Your entry has run away from the rest of us and I suspect there’s good reason for that. Continued good luck in the contest. BTW, stay healthy. If something happens to the guy in first place, who are they going to suspect, eh?

Neither of us won the contest, but we ended up finishing consecutively, and yes, Lazarus passed me by. Almost a year later, we met again at Second Wind Publishing, which has released both More Deaths Than One and The Medicine People.

Now that I’ve read The Medicine People, I still don’t quite know what to say. Well, yes I do. “This is a good book. Read it.” But that’s not exactly a review, and I promised to write one. I can tell you that the book is a mystery with a sub-story of love in all its guises, but that’s not a review, either. I can tell you that it’s my favorite type of story, where some past action — in this case a murder that was committed twenty-five years ago — affected the characters’ lives, and now the search for the truth turns those lives upside down again. Hmmm. Maybe you could check out The Medicine People for yourself. That will get me off the hook!

8 responses to “Introducing Lazarus Barnhill”

I was in that Gather contest, too. Laz left really good, useful comments. He had a real knack for coming up with something positive to say about every single story sample. I didn’t even manage to make it through reading all of them.

“Medicine People” is an excellent mystery set in Oklahoma in modern times. A murder, committed 25 years ago, has the whole town jumping when Ben Whitekiller (accused of the crime) returns to town to give himself up to the police. It’s up to young police officer, Dan Hook, to solve the mystery and see justice done.

I loved “Medicine People” The characters are realistic, the action well paced and the plot is full of surprises. It is a compelling story that keeps the reader enthralled.

Very good! Maybe I should get you to write the other reviews I’ve promised! Though I did manage to write a review for Lacey Took a Holiday, Laz’s published romance:

Lacey Grady is “a woman of leisure” and an alcoholic. Andy Warren is a bitter and jaded WWI veteran whose wife and only son died during childbirth. When Andy sees Lacey for the third time and recognizes that she is drinking herself to death, he kidnaps her out the brothel where she works and takes her to his mountaintop farm.

Though perhaps not a typical romantic couple, both characters are so real and finely drawn that you hope everything will work out for them in the end. Besides being a sweet romance, Lazarus Barnhill’s LACEY TOOK A HOLIDAY is a profound and profoundly moving story of redemption.

Laz is phenomenal. I met him in the Gather romance contest and I instantly connected with him as the beginning of his Lacey and my Fate and Destiny were eerily similar. I was always amazed at his kindness to other authors. And then I was even more amazed when I had the opportunity to read the complete novels. He’s an excellent author.

Laz was the one who really stood out in the Gather contest. In addition to having a witty, intriguing first chapter, he gave in-depth, insightful comments on the entries and made me wish I could write a tenth of what he did about them. He’s a great author who has become an even better friend.